(CLICK HERE FOR PIN-UP POSTER – pdf file ~200k) – We suggest photocopying at 129% – LTR to 11×17 – My wish was to be buried in the Churchyard at Downe. Now I find Mr Huxley, thumbing his nose at the Queen for refusing me a knighthood, arranged to have me planted in that mausoleum Westminster Abbey. He knows I hated London. And burying an agnostic in such a place is carrying whimsy just a little too far. So I was delighted when a mob of angry biologists and historians broke into the Abbey one night and removed my remains…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From archive
JOURNAL CLUB FIND: SOMETHING ABOUT MATING WITH YOUR COUSINS IS A GOOD THING?
An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couples (pdf). Science 8 February 2008: Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 813 – 816 To quote… “greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins” and as if tables like below really take away from the “ick” factor. ABSTRACT: Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800…
IT’S OFFICIAL – INTRODUCING THE “SCIENCE CREATIVE LITERACY SYMPOSIA”
Presumably, art and sciences interact a little like this? The Science Creative Literacy Symposia is a new fieldtrip program offered at the University of British Columbia, and is designed to provide an engaging outreach experience for students at the Grade 6/7 level. Here, the intent is to combine elements of science exploration with expository creative writing with the aim of fostering skills in written literacy, scientific literacy, as well as develop appreciation in interdisciplinary connections. – – – Hosted by the Advanced Molecular Biology Lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories, and by the fine folks at the UBC Creative Writing…
A LITTLE HIKE
FADE IN: Dialogue in Mandarin with English subtitles. An impoverished rural village in contemporary China. EXT. A SMALL WOODEN HOUSE – – DAY MAMA, a single mother of three children in her mid 30’s, walks along a dusty dirt road into a meek wooden house lugging a heavy pail of water. A shabby cloth hangs in the doorway in place of a door. INT. MAMA’S HOUSE – – DAY A one-roomed house furbished with a couple of fold-out chairs and a few pieces of old wooden furniture. One large wooden bed is in the far corner. WEI, Mama’s youngest son…
THE MYTHOLOGY – AND POTENTIAL – OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL. LEARNING FROM RACHEL CARSON
“It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks…the public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when in full possession of the facts…”[1] In her crusade to galvanize the American public against what she considered an insidious enemy masquerading as progress, Rachel Carson combined rigorous science and compelling prose to convey her message. Her book Silent Spring, published in 1962, sparked public interest in, and outcry over, the growing use of chemical products for controlling plants and insects. Her work is considered a key catalyst of…
OBSERVATIONS / REFLECTIONS ON STATUS QUO
1. Trees in the city (at winter) we are surrounded by pavement. shallow roots and bare branches. perhaps strung with christmas lights or strangled by these strings of lights? fragile / frail / awkward we stand in parking lots, by sidewalks – illusions that the city has not been taken over by concrete and pavement. birds avoid us as if we don’t belong. 2. Vending machines… and their opposites picture, for a moment, a vending machine. what does it see? when we participate in this exchange – money for goods, or not-so-goods. material profit, material waste. do you think we…
TARGETING TELOMERES AND CANCER FOR ‘DUMMIӘS’
For ‘Dummies’ is a simple yet powerful publishing genre to alleviate the anxiety and frustration people feel about understanding complicated material by mocking them with insightful and educational descriptions, making difficult material interesting and easy to understand. One of the most widespread and complicated diseases affecting us today is cancer. Everyone’s heard about cancer, but how bad is it really? Super-duper bad. Canadian statistics alone state 4 in 10 Canadians will get cancer in their lifetime. That number is getting so high; almost everyone is going to know someone affected by cancer. This reality should be enough that everyone ought…
A NON-COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF 10 WAYS PHYSICAL CHEMISTS MAKE YOUR LIFE MORE COMPLICATED
10. This list is in octal for theoretical reasons that are currently un-testable by any known technique. 7. You always feel “dirty” when you use an approximation, or round to three significant figures. 6. For a while you believed that there really were practical applications for the Schrödinger equation. That’s four months of your life you’ll never get back. 5. Entropy. 4. Unexplained headaches can be induced by any field with over six ways to define an apparently simple concept, like the radius of a molecule. And don’t even ask about viscosity, unless you’ve pre-dosed yourself with ibuprofen. 3. Statistical…
BC YOUTHS RECEIVE RICH SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TALKS ON EARTH DAY WEEKEND (PLUS A GLIMPSE INTO TRIUMF’S SATURDAY MORNING LECTURE SERIES).
(This piece is about Earth Day last year – and to also note that this year’s Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd) – – – It promised to be a great weekend. Earth Day was just around the corner. And ready for that occasion, the TRIUMF research facility on south campus was set to deliver a special version of its monthly Saturday Morning Talks, an outreach initiative spearheaded by the UBC Graduate Student Society and aimed at high school and layman audiences. The topic was to be hydrogen fuel cells. Although the occasional mention of fuel cells might…